I thought this over carefully for in those days I was not sure how clever I was.
“Of course, Sir,” I said at last, “but you will appreciate that the money I am venturing is the whole of my fortune and I am sure that you admire prudence in so young a man as myself … who was once an entered apprentice.”
He made that English “hrrumphing” noise which I have never properly mastered, and poured himself another glass of the “Piss-quick”. Perhaps, in pouring none for me, he was admiring a young man’s prudence: for my part, I applied myself to finishing the remainder of the brown sherry which the comprador had poured for me ten minutes before.
The way I had phrased my remark about having been taught prudence was tentatively Freemasonic. Guardedly, he asked me another question. I breathed a sigh of relief to the Great Architect and answered, translating freely from the Dutch. He sent his wife out of the cabin and invited me to share a certain word with him. I demurely suggested he begin, as I had been taught, and we lettered-and-halved it. He did not like my Dutch version of the last letter, so I wrote it down on the corner of a scrap of paper. This satisfied him, especially when I tore off the scrap of paper on which I had written and swallowed it. This made him a little benign, although no less severe, and it soon became evident that he had made great progress in certain things and had passed under a certain architectural feature whilst I, because of my youth, had still to make my Mark. I hope I make myself clear but if I do not it is of no possible interest to you.
He drank some more of his nasty drink, patted his beard dry with a great pocket-handkerchief and gazed at me sternly and a little benignly.
“Well, now, young Lewis,” he said (if you are good grandchildren you will one day understand why he called me that), “I daresay you wish to look over my ship?”
“Do you think I should, Sir? I know nothing of ships,” I answered diffidently.
“Then learn, Sir, learn! Mr Mate! Pray give my compliments to the Third Officer and say that I should esteem it a courtesy if he could spare the time to wait upon me at some time during this watch.” I could hear the First Mate bellowing incomprehensibly dirty words from the quarter-deck, none of which seemed to echo the sardonic civilities of the Captain.
“My first mate,” said Captain Knatchbull almost apologetically, “is invaluable. He is, as you have seen, or will see, a mere anthropoid ape who swings himself along on his knuckles, but there is none like him for coaxing a recalcitrant watch aloft to shorten sail on a black and stormy night. His principle is that the men should be more afraid of him than of death; it seems to serve well, for the men are even less intelligent than him and are good Christians every one: they have to attest to this before signing Ship’s Articles.”
In the time that it took him to say this, the Third Mate appeared in the cabin doorway, panting for breath and tugging at a last button on his tunic.
“Ah, Mr Lord Stevenage,” said the Captain with heavy and, as it seemed to me, over-stressed civility, “pray allow me to apologise for disturbing your doubtless well-earned repose.”
The Third Mate was a young and well-enough looking fellow, perhaps five years older than me but not so well set up and at first glance seeming older still because of the lines of dissipation or illness which marked his well-bred features.
“I was not asleep, Sir,” he replied stiffly; “you will recall that I am standing both anchor watches at call until we sail.”
“So you are,” said the Captain, “so you are, to be sure. Now, let me present Mr Van Cleef, who proposes to do us the honour of sailing with us as supernumerary officer; his appointment is that of, ah, let us say, Paymaster. I know that you will be glad to share your commodious cabin with him. His servant shall sling his hammock in the disused pantry next along. Perhaps now you will favour me by showing Mr Van Cleef over and around the ship.”
The young officer opened his mouth then closed it again.
“Thankyou Mr Lord Stevenage,” said the Captain. “That will be all.”
Outside the cabin we looked at each other with entirely straight faces, silently challenging each other to display an emotion. One of us wanted to laugh, the other to curse; neither of us was sure which was which. Perhaps both for both things, I do not know now, it was long ago.
“Follow me, if you please,” he said at last. We went down the gangplank and onto the dock. I flicked an eye in the direction of Dirty Annie’s. His eye, too, flicked there momentarily but he was on duty, you understand, and British. Moreover, the Captain could have seen us through the scuttle.
“Mr Lord Stevenage,” I began.
“I say,” he said, “look, my name is Lord Peter Stevenage; it amuses the captain to address me in the droll way you have heard but I’m afraid I don’t much care about it. In front of him or the other officers you’d better call me Mister Stevenage; in private you may call me what you will.”
I looked at him. He had many pimples but in all other respects his face was frank and open, despite the marks of dissipation.
“Peter?” I said, diffidently.
“That will do very well,” he said, suddenly smiling in the most engaging way. “And what am I to call you?”
“It is some while since anyone called me Karli,” I said.
“Then Karli it shall be. Now, to our task. I have brought you onto the dock so that you may see our little ship from the outside.”
It looked an enormous ship to me but I had no experience of such things in those days. In fact it looked like a man-of-war, for there was a long line of gunports down its side.
“Yes,” he said following my gaze, “my father had her built almost like a Royal Navy corvette by old List of Wootton Creek, near Cowes, for in those days the Royal Yacht Squadron was an auxiliary fighting force. Indeed, the John Coram – although that was not her name then – fought well at Navarino in 1827. She mounted a broadside of eleven guns as well as a long brass piece amidships but now half of the ports are empty and rigged for sweeps.”
“Sweeps?”
“Long oars. Damn’ useful if you’re becalmed and drifting, especially if there’s a lorcha full of pirates about to swarm over you.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, my stomach jerking uneasily. “And your father …?”
“Had her built, yes. I lost her at cards. Now, you’d better pay attention, for the Captain may quiz you about her. She’s the only ship-rigged vessel in the opium trade; the rest are brigs and schooners and a couple of barquentines. She’s of 330 tons burthen but has little cargo-space: opium takes up very little room and, homeward bound, we carry nothing but a specie-room full of silver and a few chops of the new teas if we’re in Canton River at the right time.
“That is why, d’you see, the officers’ and crew’s quarters are so ah, commodious.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice.
“I am sorry,” I said, “that I have been foisted upon you.”
“Oh, damme, that’s all right. Glad of your company. D’you snore much?”
“I do not think so.”
“Oh, good. Now, pray observe the lines of the ship.” For quite five minutes he described and rhapsodised about the ship’s shape, using rare and wonderful words which at that time meant nothing whatever to me. “You see that, I’m sure?” he finished.
“Yes,” I said. “Or at least, I think I remember most of what you have said so far.” He made that engaging smile again.
“That’s the spirit. When we’re at sea I shall point out other, coarser vessels to you and you will understand when you compare them with what you are looking at now, from here.”
He paused for two or three minutes while I dutifully etched the image of the John Coram onto my mind’s eye – not a difficult task for one who had already learned to memorise some two hundred cryptic marks on Delft and porcelain.
“Now,” he went on, “notice her breadth of beam: this allows her to carry a great press of canvas – and her heavy armament, which you may be glad of when we find ourselves amongst the l
orchas of Hok-keen and the Ladrones.”
“There cannot be too many guns for my taste,” I said frankly.
“Quite right; well said. The buggers must, at all costs, be kept at a distance, for once they’re aboard you may as well count yourself a dead man and clap a pistol to your temple, for they are fiends incarnate.”
I thought that he was trying, in a jocular, English way, to frighten me, so I said something brave and carefree, I forget what. He looked at me strangely, then changed the subject.
“The new owners have made a bad mistake, to my mind. This yacht – ship – was designed for spread of sail, not hoist. By that I mean that she was not built to carry sky-scrapers.”
“Sky-scrapers?”
“Yes. Extra sails on extension masts – moonsails, skysails and so forth. In my father’s day our masts seldom rose more than a few inches beyond the rigging that supported them; although, in exceptional summer-like weather, we sent up topgallant and royal masts in one.”
“Really?” I said without comprehension.
“Yes. But Captain Knatchbull has contracted the new Yankee disease of flying kites far above the royals on spars the weight of salmon rods, his nature is such that he can brook no rival, he would send us all to Davy Jones’s locker rather than let another ship eat the wind out of him, still less pass him.”
“These skysails and so forth are, then, a bad thing?” I asked carefully, so as to make sure. He made a sort of exploding noise.
“God’s teeth and trowsers!” he shouted. “Isn’t that just what I’ve been telling you? Damme, look at the rake of her masts! Would any sane man send up skyscrapers to top ’em? Can’t you see she’s built for spread?” Then, in a kinder voice, he added “No, I forgot, pray forgive me; no doubt you’ll see what I mean by the end of the voyage. If any of us are still alive.”
“Is the venture so desperate as that?” I asked. He recovered himself, breathed deeply.
“This is Captain Knatchbull’s fourth voyage in the country trade. He is living on borrowed time, for he is already rich; his motive now is only to excel all other captains in the trade, he cares nothing for his life or the lives of those he commands.”
“And you?” I asked.
“I? I am a ruined man. The family fortune’s entailed; the houses are mortgaged to the hilt; I cannot lie with my wife because I have the syphilis, d’you see – the Great Pox. In any case, she lies with another. And to me. Before I am thirty the signs and symptoms will become excruciating: I’d far rather take a Celestial Chinee knife in my liver then fetch up in the Incurables Hospital, sans teeth, sans nose, sans everything.”
“I am sorry,” I said, lamely.
“I’m not.”
We went up the gangplank again, he whistling merrily or so it seemed; I rather glum and wishing myself well out of this perilous enterprise.
“Cheerily now, Karli!” he cried, clapping me upon the shoulder, “don’t let me take the wind from your sails: there’s many a worse ship afloat – aye, and many a worse skipper – and this one will make your fortune if ever a ship can!” I sketched out a smile.
“That’s the thing!” he cried, “if we’re to be messmates we must keep each other jolly, don’t you see?”
He took me forward to the fo’c’sle and threw open the door. Several open-faced, clean, smiling fellows jumped to their feet with alacrity: it was clear that Peter Stevenage was popular with the crew.
“Here are our hearts of oak, Karli; at least, those who have finished wenching and come aboard. Some of them served under my father when this ship had another name and ‘RYS’ after it, eh, Tom Transom?”
“Yes indeed Mr Peter,” grinned a capable-looking old shell-back, knuckling his forehead.
“Pray get on with your scrimshaw and make-and-mend, lads,” said Peter, “but first say how d’ye do to Mr Van Cleef, our new supercargo, who will be bunking and messing along with me. He is new to the sea so I look to you all to show him the ropes and spars and to cover up his mistakes until he finds his sea-legs, what?”
“That we shall, Sir.” they growled, some “making a leg”, some tugging a forelock (but in no servile way), some bobbing their heads awkwardly.
“I had thought a fo’c’sle to be a kind of hell-hole,” I remarked as we made our way aft. The place had surprised me by its roomy comfort and warmth.
“Most of them are,” he replied, “many are little better than Mayfair tenements. But this one was designed for a crack yacht, you recall, and has been enlarged by throwing into it the former officers’ quarters; we officers now live in the passengers’ staterooms aft and the captain occupies the former owners’ quarters.” He did not say this at all bitterly; my respect for him grew every minute.
“We carry a double crew, d’you see, for we need so little cargo-space; in fact we muster three strong watches so that even in the wildest weather there can always be a watch below. We are one of the few ships that can weather the Cape and every man a dry suit of slops to his back. Depend upon it, that’s a rarity!”
“I am sure of it,” I said politely.
“Moreover, every man-jack is an able-bodied seaman, salted and dried, who can hand, reef and steer and heave the lead, turn in a dead-eye, gammon a bowsprit, fish a broken spar, rig a purchase, knot, point, splice, parcel and serve as well as spin his own yarns and lines in our ropewalk.”
“Upon my word!” I murmured.
“Yes,” he went on enthusiastically – this was clearly a topic close to his heart – “I’m bound to say this for Knatchbull – Captain Knatchbull, I should say – he has kept up my father’s standards so far as crew is concerned, no cogsmen and fakers in this ship. Some of the Yankee ships that are coming into the trade now prefer to sign on a gaggle of waterfront rats, wasters, the scum of the seas who can get no other work, then break their spirits with brass knuckles and the rope’s-end until they will do anything – feats no true seaman in his senses would attempt – for fear of losing their rations, their tot of rum – or their front teeth. ‘Bully’ Lubbock, our ‘bucko’ first officer, used to command such a ship until he was arraigned for triple manslaughter on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco.”
“He did not, I confess, strike me as a wholly cultivated gentleman,” I said.
“He is not a gentleman of any sort,” said Peter sharply. “He is a boor, and a dangerous one. Steer clear of him, give him a wide berth and for God’s sake do not let him anger you: one proud retort from you and he will find ways of making your life a hell upon the waters.” My spirits, so recently raised, sank again. Peter, once again, clapped me upon the shoulder.
“Come, cheer up, I did not mean to daunt you. He is a well enough fellow in a rough way. Pretend to admire him and you will have no trouble. Now come and meet the doctor, the mainstay of our little ship.”
“You carry a surgeon?” I asked, surprised.
“See for yourself,” he replied, kicking hard at the door of a curious sort of round-house shed a little aft of the main-mast and roaring, in a voice new to me, “Come out of there, you black-enamelled bastard, we’ve come to hang you!” On the instant, the door burst open and a monstrous blackamoor appeared, almost naked and brandishing a meat-cleaver. On seeing Peter his face split open like a melon, displaying an inordinate number of exceedingly white teeth. He hid the cleaver behind him and spoke in a sheepish, high-pitched whine.
“Knowed it was you Maz Peter; cain’t fool ole doctor after all thiz years; anyways, I hain’t got nuthin on ma conshequence that’s hanging stuff.”
“Not even in Alabama?” asked my friend quizzically.
“Now hesh, Maz Peter; thass ole stuff, and Alabama’s a million miles away I reckon.”
“ ‘But that was in another country, and, besides, the wench is dead.’” This was a quotation, I could tell. Perhaps from Nimrod himself, for all I knew. “Be that as it may,” Peter went on, “this is Mr Van Cleef. He will be your friend, for he is well versed in the works of Captain Marryat, and you, in turn, ar
e to treat him with respect – by which I mean that you are not to poison him or I shall flog you myself.” The negro cook drew himself up, so far as the galley-door allowed.
“P’ison, Maz Peter? Why, you know I haint p’isoned nobody this ten years, ’cept accidental.”
“Precisely. Let there be no accidents. By the same token, what hell’s brew is that on the mess-kid bench, smelling so vilely?”
“That hain’t no hell-brew, Maz Peter, that my famous portable soup an’ mighty glad you’ll be of it, soon as we clear the Cap Verdies.” I looked at the curious, toffee-like slabs which were cooling in shallow trays. Peter explained that this was, indeed, highly concentrated soup which would set into a tough jelly: a piece no larger than the joint of a thumb would, he promised me, make a pint of nourishing soup and was scarcely poisonous at all except for a marked laxative effect which was often welcome during a long voyage. The “doctor” gazed at it proudly, ever and again scooping off a handful of the blowflies which were revelling upon its surface and squashing them in his huge, pink palm.
Peter jingled the coins in his pocket and looked at me in a meaningful way. I understood in a moment and slipped a half-sovereign into the doctor’s hand. The hand closed upon it then opened again: the gold piece was gone! The next moment he retrieved just such a piece from my ear, with a merry chuckle. Clearly, the fellow was versed in the ancient African magic, although now I am inclined to believe that it was mere legerdemain. Be that as it may, I never laid out a piece of money so fruitfully: throughout the voyage that cook saw to it that my Dutch belly never wanted for plentiful and delicate fare. (Indeed, the whole ship’s company ate uncommonly well: the owners had the good sense – rare then and just as rare today – to know that an extra £100 laid out on galley-stuff over and above the usual rate of provisioning made for a sturdy and concentrated crew.)
All the Tea in China Page 9